


In the Seattle Rains

by arcadesintheneighbourhood



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Fluffy Ending, Love, Marriage Proposal, Romantic Fluff, Seattle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 08:00:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13430412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcadesintheneighbourhood/pseuds/arcadesintheneighbourhood
Summary: El and Mike propose to each other on top of a ferry.





	In the Seattle Rains

“Seattle is actually home to one of the largest timber industries in the nation,” The ferry tour guide informs the empty benches and Mike and El, who are sitting in the last row near the stairwell to the indoor area. “Alright! Now we’ll take a short break so you can enjoy the scenery and in ten minutes we’ll talk about the aquatic species specific to the Pacific Northwest.”

 

As the tour guide switches off her microphone, a cold gust of air brushes over El, tingling her cheeks and causing her to shudder. She digs her hands into her raincoat pockets and finds her dad’s old wedding band, twisting it around in her fingers. Mike, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to notice the winds, his brown eyes wide with wonder as he gazes at the unfamiliar shapes of the skyline.

 

“Whoa!” Mike spots something and taps El’s hand in an ecstatic rhythm. “El, El, El, look at that! It’s the Space Needle!” Mike exclaims as he points to a distant building in the thick of the overcast gray.

 

“Nice, right? It’s so much bigger than I thought it would be,” The last sentence falls out of Mike’s mouth in a quiet awe, like he can’t believe the world is bigger than he is and he gets to discover it. El can’t help but to smile at her boyfriend’s excitement, her chest swelling at how cute he looks just then, his cheeks flushed from the wind, his hair stuck to his ears from the earlier barrage of rain. As Mike beams and poises his camera at the discs cradled by white and silver stalks, El remembers why she agreed to sit on top of the ferry even though it was so cold. Mike was so adorably happy when he was taking his best pictures of a new place.

 

“The top kind of looks like something from Star Wars,” She comments, a larger smile slipping onto her face because she knows how happy Mike will be when he realizes this himself. Sure enough, he pauses and replies,

 

“It kind of does, doesn’t it? Oh, man, Dustin, Will, and Lucas are going to be so excited. Wait ‘til I show them our pictures!” Mike turns his head to meet El’s eyes when he notices her hugging herself. “El, are you cold?”

 

“Yes,” El admits as she shivers, because she and Mike don’t lie to each other, though she wished they did sometimes, because now he’s going to worry about her and insist they go downstairs.

 

Sure enough, Mike worriedly asks, “Why didn’t you say anything?” as he pulls her closer to him on the bench. “Come on, let’s go downstairs. We can buy hot chocolates from the snack bar to warm up.”

 

“No, I want to stay here,” She insists. She knows she’ll be cold for the remaining twenty minutes of the ride, but she wants Mike to stay excited as he snaps his photos. He deserved it. Sensing her thought process, Mike counters,

 

“El, don’t stay here because of me, okay? I can get pictures through the windows downstairs.”

 

“Mike, I’m fine,” El places a steady hand on his chest. “I want to stay. Please.”

 

“Are you sure?” Mike’s eyebrows scrunch concernedly as he outlines the cold skin on her forehead with his thumb.

 

“I’m sure. I can manage,” El assures, trying her best to sound as certain as possible. She knows Mike will agree to let them stay if she sounds sure.

 

“Okay,” Mike locks his worried eyes on her again before digging through their backpack for his extra jacket. “Here, take the extra jacket, okay?” He sets it in her lap and hugs her to him again. “And promise me you’ll tell me if it gets to be too much for you, okay?” He strokes her slicked hair since the rain had unraveled her curls. “I don’t want you to get sick.”

 

“I promise.” El lingers in his arms for a moment longer before releasing him to slide her arms into the coat. _It smells like Mike_ , she thinks happily as she pulls it over herself.

 

“Are you excited to hear about the different fish?” She asks him as she tugs up the zipper. Mike had been reading all about Seattle’s history in the past two weeks after he came back from work, spewing facts about George Vancouver and the Port of Seattle and the annual rainfall compared to Hawkins.

 

“Yeah! ” Mike bobs his head up and down. “I’m so excited to go to the aquarium today, too! We can finally see a sea otter in real life.”

 

“Can we take photos in the aquarium?” El wonders. “I think Dustin would like a photo of the sea otter, too.”

 

“Hopefully,” Mike takes a second to think. “If not, we’ll bring him back a brochure.”

 

“Maybe it’ll inspire him to discover a new species again,” El half-teases, making Mike groan.

 

“Hopefully not. It didn’t go well the last time, remember?”

 

“I know.” She leans over and squeezes his hand, and as their eyes rest peacefully on each other’s, the warmth of the past ten years rushes over her. She still couldn’t believe that they still loved each other after all this time, that their love for each other grew everyday, filling the space of everywhere they went: Hawkins, Chicago, Seattle. Love like theirs, love that persisted even in the midst of silver clouds and before the onset of a rainstorm, love like that was rare. Caught in the sweetness of the moment, El opens her mouth and prepares herself to ask-

 

“Um, El?” Mike beats her to a question.

 

“Yes, Mike?” El’s heart drums as she gazes at him.

 

“Oh, nothing, just um, I’m going to take a photo over there!” Mike jumps up and walks over to the railing, snapping another photo of the Space Needle.

 

Hmm… that was strange. Mike had been starting a lot of uncompleted thoughts in the past two days. He started them when they were standing in line to get coffee from Starbucks, and when they were walking through Pike’s Place with their hands intertwined, and even when they were taking the train from the airport to their hotel. As they were riding into the city, El had noticed how the pine needles bristled to the subtle motion of the breezes and said to Mike,

 

“The needles. They look like the hairs on dad’s beard.”

 

And Mike responded enthusiastically,

 

“I was just about to tell you I noticed the same thing!”

 

And then they locked their eyes on each other, and Mike began to ask her something, but then he quickly changed his question to which one of their friends was the most likely to grow a beard (they both agreed on Dustin).

 

At first she thought that Mike wanted to ask the same question she wanted to ask, but now she was worried. He had been feeling more and more stressed out since he graduated and started working, and she feared the stress was eating away at him, consuming his life. Did he want to tell her something else?

 

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately,” El observes as she walks to where Mike is standing.

 

“What? Doing what?” Mike croaks while he examines his camera a little too closely.

 

“Starting to say something and then shrugging it off,” El touches his wrist with her fingers. “Is everything okay?”

 

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine.” Mike bites his lip and looks up at her shyly. “I-I’m happy we’re here. I needed a break, and- and- I don’t know. Nothing is better than spending my breaks with you.”

 

El softens at his statement. How did he do it? He still managed to make her feel as safe and loved and wonderful as he did when they first met.

 

“I’m happy you’re feeling better,” She moves her hand from his wrist to the top of his hand. “I love spending time with you, too.”

 

Mike’s eyes shine at her, and that’s when El knows. It’s time, she thinks to herself. She unzips her outer coat with her other hand and reaches into her inner rain jacket pocket for Hopper’s old gold band.

 

“Mike?”

 

“Yes, El?”

 

Shaking, El removes his left hand from his camera. As Mike looks at her questioningly, El lifts her hand holding the ring from her jacket pocket to his hand. She sets it in his palm and finally, she asks the question she’d been practicing in front of the mirror for the past six weeks.

 

“Mike, Will you-Will you marry me?”

 

She wishes she wasn’t shaking and so nervous right now, and she wants to stop, but she sees Mike flick his eyes down at the ring in his palm, then up at her, and she notices that as his eyes water, he’s shaking too.

 

“You-you-you want to marry me?”

 

“Yes,” She replies quietly, still nervously waiting his reply. Oh no, what was he going to say, what was he going to say, what was was he going to-

 

El’s thoughts are cut short when Mike pulls her in for a hug.

 

“I want to marry you so much,” His voice is breaking as he rocks her back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. “So much, El. I’ve been trying to propose to you this whole week. This whole week.”

 

He lets go of her to slip his ring onto his finger and to bring a little black box from his own jacket pocket.

 

“You were proposing,” El shakes her head, tears emerging at the corner of her eyes.

 

“I don’t actually care about if Dustin gets a beard,” Mike laughs, and El laughs along with him.

 

“It might look good on him,” El says as Mike takes a little diamond ring out from the box and slips it onto her ring finger. El wraps her arms around Mike’s neck as he rests his hands on her waist.

 

“Only time will tell,” Mike replies. El eyes his lips and she knows he is eyeing her lips but just before she can lean in to kiss him, Mike says,

 

“El?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I just,” He draws in a breath, his eyes wet with happiness. “I love you so much.”

 

“I love you, too, Mike,” She smiles as she rubs the back of his neck as to say, _I’m not leaving this time. There’s nothing to worry about. We can be together forever._

 

And as their lips meet to kiss in the thick of the overcast gray, another curtain of Seattle rain falls down on them. Mike and El both pull apart to grin at each other, and she knows they’re both thinking the same thing.

 

“The pictures can wait,” Mike voices their thoughts, letting their newly ring-laced fingers intertwine, and El can’t help but beam at their handholding. “Let’s get that celebratory hot chocolate now, okay?”

**Author's Note:**

> This was super hard to write because I'm always afraid to write Mike and Eleven because honestly it's so hard do canon justice, but I had sooo much fun writing it! This was inspired by my trip to Seattle with my friends, I love the city and I tried to do it justice, (if you are from this area, please give me criticism in terms of the setting and let me know what you think!)


End file.
